It isn’t often that you see a thriller about international terrorism as even-handed as Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s Traitor. The perils of counter-intelligence are its subject, but the underlying message is that there are two sides to every story.
The admirable Don Cheadle plays a Sudanese-American former US Special Forces explosives expert who has disappeared after a posting in Afghanistan. He is first seen selling Semtex to an Islamic terror group, but Guy Pearce’s FBI agent rumbles him and he is placed in a Yemeni prison.
There he meets an Islamist (Saïd Taghmaoui), who persuades him to join a terrorist cell, breaks the pair out of prison and helps to keep the FBI off his trail before planning a coup that will kill hundreds.
Traitor’s central themes are the abuse of religion on one side and brutal compromises on the other. Nachmanoff sees to it that the location work around the globe is first-class and the thriller elements are not overlaid with too many obvious action set-pieces, while Cheadle’s work is watchable as always, even if his conflicting emotions are not laid out in any great depth.
It’s an uneven film but not one to disregard.
Traitor
Cert: 12A
